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Edward Snowden

The Guardian today released additional excerpts from Glenn Greenwald’s videotaped (by documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras) interview conducted in Hong Kong with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden before he outed himself last month. He accurately predicted the government’s response to his revelations and explains clearly why he felt it necessary to do what he’s done.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (Guardian photo)

He is a very principled man of great courage troubled by what his government has become, as am I.

It is an in-depth discussion of how the Guardian is dealing with the materials Snowden has disclosed to them, of which there is more coming. While both British and US officials told the Guardian they would rather none were published, they were given an opportunity to argue the case if publication of any specific document would truly endanger national security. Neither government offered any such argument!

There is also a good exploration of Snowden’s motives and his understanding of the consequences of his actions—excellent interview.

“The Snowden Affair is a ‘rerun’ of issues first uncovered during the 1970s, though these problems trace back to the earliest American efforts at espionage,” says [Pat] Shea. Between 1975 and 1976, the Church committees produced more than a dozen reports detailing the illegal activities of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, which included opening mail, intercepting telegrams, planting bugs, wiretapping, and attempting to break up marriages, foment rivalries and destroy careers of private citizens. “We thought we put a stop to this wholesale collection of information on Americans forty years ago,” says Peter Fenn, another former Church staffer.

Looks like we’re condemned to repeat some history here. Marc notes in his blog, as I did a few days ago, that the polling data show a lot of ambivalence on the part of our fellow citizens “and perhaps as a result poll-sensitive elected officials, with the exception of Wyden and Udall, are laying low. Again, I suspect, Church would be stunned.” I sure am!

The situation is much worse now than then. The nation has bought into an omnipresent danger of terror in the land. It’s one way of keeping a fragile polity united.

I’ve been following the adventures of Edward Snowden, and it appears that no one has actually seen him in Moscow, where he was supposed to have spent the night after leaving Hong Kong. In addition to having booked a seat from Hong Kong to Moscow, Snowden had a seat on a flight to Havana that left Moscow without him today.

What if that were a feint. and he actually went in the other direction. VietNam might be a convenient stopover. There he could visit with the Ecuadorian foreign minister and, perhaps, hitch a ride to Ecuador.

While he did not get to my specific questions, Snowden provided useful clarification about the difference between policy restrictions and technical capabilities for accessing communication content.

While he made it clear that he was divulging information only to journalists, not governments, the mainstream media did not fare well:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

I loved his witty response to the question of whether he was supplying China with information in exchange for asylum:

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

You don’t have to have done something wrong; you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call. Then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone into the context of a wrongdoer. —Edward Snowden

Based on a database mismatch of a suspicious fingerprint on a plastic bag tied to the Madrid bombing in Spain, where Mayfield had never set foot, agents obtained a secret warrant, broke into and searched his home. His 12-year-old daughter was terrified; she noticed someone had been in her room and had messed with her computer. The family became paranoid—for good reason. FBI agents walked into Mayfield’s office one day, handcuffed and took him away. He spent weeks in jail, imagining the worst. Spanish authorities, doubtful of the US fingerprint match, found the culprit who was the real match, and Mayfield was released.

What could possibly be more compelling than the fact that no one in the family had been to Spain? Well, the sophisticated government database that mismatched his fingerprint, correctly showed that Mayfield, who grew up in Kansas, after graduating from college, law school and serving in the Army, married an Egyptian immigrant and converted to Islam. He eventually got a rare FBI apology and $2 million for his trouble. “But you never quite get over these things,” Mayfield said. “It was a harrowing ordeal. It was terrifying.”